Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson

  Hey Phoebe, Sophie from team U2. The guys would love to say a quick hello before the show tonight. Can I meet you and bring you backstage?

  Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Y’all, I highly recommend hanging out with a family member while receiving word that a world-famous celebrity wants to say “Whaddup” to you. Sure, this is almost impossible to plan, but if you can make it happen, you’ll seem really cool in the eyes of the family member. More importantly, this feat allows you to go back in time and undo past embarrassing moments, like when you were at a sporting event and tried to high-five the person, who was celebrating with other people and ended up leaving you hanging; that one time you stuffed Kleenex in your armpits to help with your sweating and then when you hugged your crush, the tissue fell out the shirt and to the ground (just me?); and all the times you accidentally said, “You, too,” in response to a waiter telling you to enjoy your meal. Of course, a celeb wanting to show you love can’t undo all that, but it sure feels like it.

  Sophie scooped us up and took us backstage. As expected, it was much less hectic than the backstage area at Bonnaroo, and the other folks waiting for the band were Team I Had Adult Acne When The Joshua Tree Originally Came Out, meaning Liz and I were, by far, the youngest people there. Everyone in the room was cute, eagerly waiting and talking U2. After a short while, the Edge entered and chatted up a foursome, and moments later, Bono walked in. And this time, I got to witness how great he is to his fans.

  He talked to one group for at least ten minutes as they laughed over inside jokes; to another set of fans, he caught up on their lives and then gave them a handwritten letter for their friend who was in the hospital and couldn’t make it to the show; then he’d go over to Edge and tag him out and take over talking to some fans. No matter who he was with, he made sure each person felt special and was fully engaged, listening to every word people were saying to him, and he was generous with his time in a way that many folks, myself included, aren’t sometimes. After making the rounds, Bono headed over to Liz and me, who were the last people he had to greet.

  Even though he had asked to see me, I was still surprised that he knew me. We chatted a bit, I introduced him to Liz, he wished her best of luck with her pregnancy, and then he agreed to take some pictures with me.

  “Bono,” I started, “the lighting is bad. And I’m black. No one’s gonna to see my face.”

  He laughed and said, “This is just like Bonnaroo when I directed our pictures,” and then positioned me so the lights were serving me dramatic Hitchcockian eleganza. #WhosThereHunty #IDontKnow #ImJustAScaredWhiteLady.

  Aaaaah!!! He remembered! We took a few photos (including one I took of him and Liz), but the cutest part of our whole exchange? Midconvo, he saw Ali, his wife, and beaming with pride, he brought her over to introduce her to me. It was obvious how in love he is with her. She complimented my blue-green hair, and the four of us talked about the tour. Eventually, his assistant told him he had to go get ready for the show. He said, “Okay,” and then kept talking to Liz and me as if he didn’t have to entertain sixty thousand people for two hours. I knew he had to go, and in that moment, I kicked myself because I hadn’t brought him anything to sign. Then I looked down at my purse from & Other Stories and asked him to sign it.

  Concerned, Ali was like, “But it’s such a beautiful bag.”

  I shrugged. “It’s all I have.”

  Bono took the purse despite his assistant telling him he had to go and, with a Sharpie, quickly sketched a cowboy on it with the caption “B P.”

  “All right, you really have to go,” the assistant politely reminded him.

  “Wait,” he said. He flipped over the purse and drew a quick portrait of me. Y’all, I don’t know what it is about me, but I must be giving off some Kate Winslet “Draw me like one of your French girls” vibes because the man is always inspired to do some art when I’m around.

  Bono handed the purse back to me, and then he and Ali walked out of the room holding hands. #CoupleGoals.

  And just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, the next day, I went on U2.com (because of course I did) and saw that the pic of Bon-Bon and me that I had posted on Instagram was screenshot and placed on the website:

  Not going to lie, this picture of Zaddy B and me ending up on U2.com filled me with the same amount of pride as the Washington Post organization must’ve had when they reported the Watergate scandal. #Ig.

  Listen, boo-boos, I don’t know how else to explain either Bonarios aka Bono scenarios other than that they have to be my reparations for the annoyances I’ve had to put up with as a black person. So now it’s your turn to take stock of your life and look back on all the reparations you’ve received. Except if you’re white. If you’re white, maybe don’t call it reparations. Call it “living your best Meryl Streep life when she and Steve Martin made chocolate [obnoxious French accent] croissants in It’s Complicated.” Or “Tuesday.” Yeah, call it “Tuesday.”

  Money Is a Trifling Heaux and Also Your BFF

  I know name-calling isn’t cool, but I spelled “ho” the French way to make it classier, kind of like when I take something ignorant (unbuttoning my pants halfway through dinner at an Italian restaurant) and make it slightly less ig (bringing up net neutrality during dessert) to distract from the fact that my underwear is making a cameo. But in my defense, (1) carbs bloat me out, making my stomach look like Dizzy Gillespie’s cheeks when he played the trumpet,* and (2) I only undo my pants while dining out because I’ve mistakenly worn my standing jeans instead of my sitting ones. You know what I’m talking about. Standing jeans are gorgeous, skintight, hug every curve perfectly, and are compliment magnets because they have you looking like a delicious Fiber One snack. #HeartHealthy. Sitting jeans, on the other hand, are what you wear for all the things you can’t do in standing ones: eat, breathe, live, have the trash posture of the Hunchback of Notre Dame but the joy of Rudy when he played for Notre Dame. For real, take notice the next time you’re at da clurb or some other “hip” place. Most of the women there in booty-hugging bottoms aren’t “chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool.” Instead, they’re stiffly standing upright in first position like a bunch of low-budget Black Swans. ANYWAY! I should stop stalling and just get on with the essay.

  But I’m nervous! I’m talking frazzled like in ninth grade when the teacher called on me to read the next passage in the Odyssey, but I wasn’t paying attention because I was daydreaming about Kevin from Backstreet Boys,* so I panicked, said “Life’s an odyssey” Deepak Chopra style, and then mic-dropped like I blew some minds. But I didn’t. Everyone stared at me, so I asked what page we were on and read aloud.

  All kidding aside, I’m anxious because this essay is about cabbage, loot, ducats, moolah, scratch, “dolla, dolla bills, y’all,” coins, cheddar, Benjamins, dough, cake, greenbacks, M to the O to the N to the E to the Y, money. And as we all know, talking about money can be weird.

  It’s awkward if you’re lacking cash yet people assume you have some. It’s worse when e’rybody knows your pockets are like my Afro after a night out on the town: full of lint, down-pillow feathers, cracked M&M’s, and not much money. And if people know you have plenty of money? You best believe they’re looking at you like, “I left the milk and cookies out, St. Nick. Where’s my shit?” and expecting you to start paying for things.

  However, it’s not just financial status; it’s also about how we display our real and/or imagined financial statuses. Some are dressed head to toe in the latest designer fashions despite being in massive amounts of debt, while others are serving affordable camp-counselor realness, yet they’re hella rich (ahem, Mark Zuckerberg). But except for an outlier like him, whose portfolio is public knowledge, there is a whole lot of keeping mum about money. I mean, a girlfriend will sooner tell me the deets of her sex life than reveal what’s in her bank account, and that’s because sharing sexcapade
s can now be considered a charming party trick while it’s still thought to be impolite or gauche to talk about money. Well, as the Citizen Kane of our time, MTV’s The Real World, taught us: It’s time to “stop being polite and start getting real. The Real World.” Well, in the real world, money (or lack thereof) partially determines our self-worth and dictates how we live. And I should know because I used to be one of those people who would avoid talking about money openly and honestly.

  I mean, sure, most of us grew up on either Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or MTV Cribs, where celebrities would show off their glamorous abodes and allow us to ogle over all the expensive and mostly unnecessary things they own, but the average person? I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t want HD cameras to see that my not-having-central-air-conditioning behind put ugly-beige-air-conditioner covers on my ACs that I sloppily slap blue painter’s tape around to seal out the cold air the way I used to wrap my friends’ presents in newspaper and pieces of Scotch tape that already had clothes fuzz stuck to it while saying, “‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’ is how I live my life,” when I knew damn well I wasn’t trying to be the Scottie Pippen to Captain Planet’s Michael Jordan. I just forgot my poor homie’s b-day. What I’m getting at is that if you’re a wealthy celeb, it might be cool to show how much you’re balling out of control. But for the average person, money is simply too painful a thing to discuss as it often leads to feelings of not measuring up to family, friends, and even strangers. Then there’s the added pressure from financial experts who tell us about the unrealistic standards we’re supposed to meet (e.g., Fidelity Investments stating that by age thirty-five, one should have twice their salary saved). It’s all too much. But just because we’re not saying everything about our financial sitchy-ations doesn’t mean our lips are sealed.

  Plenty of people, myself included, will in that “everyone who has a decent-paying job” way say, “I’m strapped for cash,” and then order a thirty-dollar lunch from Grubhub. This, of course, is pure bullshit, performance art in which a lot of us play the role of Pretend Broke Person, because actual, truly broke people are not ordering takeout lunch five times a week. That is classic PBP nonsense. They’ll go on and on about being low on funds yet will go to concerts regularly, decorate their apartments, enjoy small shopping sprees, buy expensive phones to keep up with the latest technology, and so on. To be clear, it doesn’t mean PBPs are playacting like they’re Oliver Twist when they’re rolling in the dough. They aren’t. This fake “brokeness” performance is the result of societal grooming. The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” ring a bell? Consumerism reigns supreme in Murrica, so having spare cash to indulge in small luxuries like ordering takeout or enjoying nights out on the town is a must. However, having too much money and splurging on niceties without giving it a second thought? That’s just trifling. And thanks to good old conditioning, one might feel a twinge of guilt and worry that those less well-off will resent and want to Single White Female them, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to downplay being flush with cash.

  Quite the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario, isn’t it? But that explains why, when money comes up, most people behave like Taylor Swift when she wins at an award show, just all “Oh, wow” and “Golly gee.” It’s like, bitch, you make fifty-five thou a year, but when the server at Chipotle says guacamole is extra, you’re gonna act like the character of Abuela Who Only Says “Ay Dios Mio” and Does the Sign of the Cross on a telenovela? Listen, Pretend Broke Person: Ya ain’t poor, and you’re holding up the gahtdamn line. So get the guac, then make it rain next door at McDonald’s and buy all the sauces they have but none of the nuggets because, guess what? You can afford to be this ridiculous, ig, and reckless with your coins. Now Truly Broke People, on the other hand? Nope. They don’t have the scratch or the time for that foolery. I should know, because for a seven-year stretch during my first decade in comedy (2009–2016), I left behind the PBP world and ended up being a TBP. Here’s a snapshot of what my life was like:

  I brought one of two packed lunches to work every day: (1) a small handful of Dole premade salad and a sad sandwich with one thin piece of lunch meat folded into many layers like a Chinese fan to give myself the illusion that this was going to fill me up or (2) a Boca brand meatless Chik’n patty,* with a side of ketchup and steamed broccoli. I, of course, explained to coworkers that this was my diet to go along with working out at the gym, but in actuality, I had secretly canceled my gym membership long ago because I couldn’t afford it.

  I only went out if it was to a comedy club whose bouncer knew me and would let me, for free, watch national headliners perform. The comic discount for food allowed me to buy a meal, which consisted of seltzer water and a basket of fries. #DinnerOfChampionsForPeopleWhoWatchTLCInTheHopesOfNotLearningAnything.

  For my birthday I asked for money from my parents and used it to pay bills. Meanwhile, my brother and sister-in-law were on H&M gift card duty, and I treated the GC like it was a black Amex card, except instead of renting private jets and getting flashy watches, I was living my best damn BOGO life (aka buy one, get one free), buying padded tank tops and sensible cardigans.

  Vacations? Never.

  Still new in comedy, I performed stand-up out of town either for free or for very little, but thanks to some life hacks, I was able to not lose as much money as I could’ve. For instance, I’d purchase a ticket from BoltBus or Megabus during one of their one-dollar trip sales or I’d travel at odd times so I could get a cheaper seat. As for hotels? Hotels, schmotels. I just slept on the couch of a comic in the city I was visiting. If I had to fly to a gig, I only took the job if the pay was enough to cover my plane ticket, and then the leftover money would be used for food and for getting to and from the venue.

  Even though I was fortunate enough to be able to afford to live by myself (a small one-bedroom), my living situation was a hot mess. I was saving up to buy a couple of ACs, so I MacGyver’d a solution for the summer to keep cool. My sleep routine consisted of turning on a tiny oscillating fan, taking off all my clothes except my undies, and putting ice-cold white towels on myself. The towels kind of looked like a bootleg version of Milla Jovovich’s iconic white bandage costume from The Fifth Element. Okay, that actually sounds kind of cute, but you know what wasn’t? Half the ceiling in my bathroom collapsing due to a massive mold problem my super was too lazy to fix. The building controlled the heat, and the only two settings were: (1) Barely on During the Winter, So Unfortch, You Have to Serve Swarovski Realness aka Have Icicles Grow on Your Nips and (2) Hot as the Devil’s Taint After He Did the White-Nonsense Version of Yoga aka An Hour-Long Yoga Class Where Dashboard Confessional Plays in the Background. And last, but not least, the occasional cockroaches popping by, unannounced, like an annoying in-law on Everybody Loves Raymond. In fact, I got so used to them that one time while cooking, I realized a cockroach was crawling up my thigh, nonchalantly brushed it away, and then resumed cooking. What in Orkin Man hell?! THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW YOU’VE LIVED IN NEW YORK CITY FOR TOO LONG. WHEN YOU CASUALLY SWEEP AWAY A COCKROACH WITH THE FLICK OF YOUR HAND THE WAY A FEY KING DISMISSES A COURT JESTER FROM HIS PRESENCE, IT’S TIME TO LEAVE NEW YORK CITY FOR A SECOND AND REALIZE YOU SHOULDN’T BE SO GRIZZLED THAT IT DOESN’T BOTHER YOU THAT HALF THE CAST OF A BUG’S LIFE IS STRAIGHT UP AIRBNB’ING IN YOUR CUPBOARDS.

  Moral of the story? I was too broke to live elsewhere. So, for many years, I stayed. Heck, there were a few dicey months when I was too broke to even live in that apartment. When deep financial distress like that occurs, one of two things happens. The world sticks out its hand, says, “I got you, boo,” in the form of a loan from a loved one, a small jackpot from the lottery, or a tax return deposit just as you’re running out of funds. Other times, the universe cackles like a cartoon villain at your checking account’s soundtrack being the sad parts of Les Miz (which is all the parts of Les Miz) and goes, “Ya been served, bitch!” And
in my case, the universe served me a no-expenses-paid trip to housing court. Quick time-out.

  Mom, Dad, sorry for not telling you about this until right now as I reveal it very publicly in a book. Admittedly it’s kind of a trash move, like at a wedding when the minister basically goes, “If you think this union is a steaming pile of doo-doo, then totes feel free to stand up and give everyone your Amazon one-star review of the couple’s relationship.”

  First of all, Minister, why are you being a messy little bitch? People put on nice underwear, used Schick Mach 5 razors to get the smoothest shave, dressed in tacky bridesmaid dresses and goofy-ass Colonel Sanders beige suits, paid for flights and hotel rooms, both the bride and groom/bride and bride/groom and groom went through the painful process of cutting certain folks from the guest list, and the wedding band had to learn both Journey’s and Earth, Wind & Fire’s entire oeuvre, and now you want to take the temperature of the room? Unless your name is Al Roker and you’re paid a million dollars to maybe sometimes guess correctly about the weather, you need to shut the fuck up.

  Second, to the fool who stands up to air their grievances: Please sit your ass down. I’ve already purchased a Cuisinart four-slice toaster, so I’mma need this nuptial to happen so that in three weeks’ time, the married couple will send me a nice thank-you card from Papyrus. Now, if they send me some generic Hallmark card garbage with a boo-boo illustration of a tulip on the front, then, wedding interrupter, and only then will I join you in doing a sit-in on the couple’s front lawn to recite the spoken-word poetry classic “Y’all Ain’t Shit and Y’all Ain’t Never Gonna Be Shit.”

  Point is, just like it’s kind of ridic to wait until the final moment to publicly express that you don’t think a marriage should go down, so is my choosing to belatedly publicly inform Ma and Pa Robinson about the crippling financial strife that almost resulted in me being evicted. So why has it taken me so long to spill the beans?